


Amad's Day

by hope91



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Mother's Day, Sorrow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 09:13:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1599512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hope91/pseuds/hope91
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dis reflects on her lost sons on Amad's Day.  It is not easy for any parent when a child dies, no matter how old that child is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amad's Day

The Mountain has been reclaimed, the sounds within it most lively and joyous.  The dragon is gone, the wounds of war healing.  Today we celebrate love and life.  Dwarrowlings young and old present gifts on Amad’s Day, showing love and care.  And because no dwarrowling ever grows too old to be non-dwarrowling to his or her Amad, those of all ages have made gifts.  And dwarven skill shows its excellence throughout all of these, even for youngest crafters among us.

I do not pull out my past Amad’s Day gifts.  That is too stark, too hard, too painful.  I have cried enough today as it is.  Instead, I look at other mementos.

Kili’s first bow, the one he first trained with when he was barely old enough to hold it.  How excited he was that day we purchased it, how he could barely wait to go to the training fields to practice.  I smile through my tears, remembering his joy as though it were yesterday.  How he thanked me.  For we had little then, and it made what we did have all the more.

I look at their fiddles, the ones they used to play when they were smaller, before the instruments became too small for their growing bodies.  And I shake my head at how they grew so fast, as any Amad does.  I run my hands over the wood, for I made these, and they are as fine now as they were then.  But it is not to feel the wood that I touch these, but to try to connect with my dwarrowlings, to feel the fiddle as they would have.  I play one a bit, for they loved music and revelry, and it would connect me to them more, but it makes the bleeding of my heart too profuse, so I stop.

I look at the pictures, the ones I made as my dwarrowlings grew over time.  I wish I had drawn more, there are so few.  Even though times had been hard, I never thought to worry of the future, that they might not be with me.  Even when Thorin took them on the Quest, I never imagined they would not return.  My brother promised, he promised they would return to me.  He would keep them safe, he said, and I knew that he loved them as his own.

I remember the events surrounding each picture. This one, Fili was so jealous of his little brother. This one here, Fili had just picked Kili up when he fell down, telling him he would protect him always. This one, both of them so annoyed that they had to sit for me, because they were too old for this, they had other things to do. This one, done after they had apologized for not sitting for my drawings more often, growing old enough to see the importance of it to me and to a family.

There are empty spaces in this book I made. Spaces for drawings of them as they grew older. Spaces for dwarrowdams if they so chose and were fortunate enough to find One, space for drawings of potential children of their own.  At least it seemed Fili might, heir to the throne he was, though he may have followed my brother’s path.  I will never know.  Perhaps one may have chosen a husband, for One is not found just for the sake of creating dwarrowlings.  I will never be a Grand-Amad by birth, but that matters not.  I only wish my own dwarrowlings were back with me. I would have gladly given my own life for them to live.

I wish I had drawn a picture of them that day, for I have no recent drawing of them and I worry the images in my mind's eye will fade. Already I feel I cannot remember their voices. And it tears me inside.

There is a knock at the door, probably one of the Company, Bofur or Bombur or Gloin, coming to ask me to join them today, for they care for me always.  I do not answer the door, pretending I am not here.

No dwarrowdam should outlive her dwarrowlings.  But I have outlived mine.  They are in the Halls, they work, they are at peace.  Their Uncle and Adad are with them.

Today, though, I take little solace in that.  I wonder how the other dwarrows and dwarrowdams who grieve their dwarrowlings cope, for even though on other days I cope well, today amongst the loud celebration I feel as though I am the only one who swims in despair.

I miss them so much, and those words do not capture even one piece of how much that is so.

I think of my dwarrowlings in the exuberant spirit of which I was told of, of which I was not surprised, of them taking down magic golden harps and playing music on them when Smaug was driven from the Lonely Mountain. I do not let myself think of them dying, defending my brother.  Of whether they died quickly, or lay in agony for endless time.  I have spent too much time thinking those thoughts already.  Though none in the Lonely Mountain would know it.

I will never forgive my brother.  He did not deserve to die, I did not want to lose him either, but were it not for him…….I should not have listened to him, I was the only one who could have stopped him, but I did not.  I should not have listened to him.

But then I imagine he does not forgive himself, that his own sorrow and guilt outweigh any words that I could send to pierce his heart the way mine has been pierced.  He would have gladly given his own life for them, too, just as easily as I would have. So that bitterness dissipates; it never has had a chance to take full root.

Today I sorrow and I will not let others see. I will not have my sons remembered by means of my grief.  I will only have them thought of for their own strength and bravery.  Their joyous personalities.  How they celebrated life, not mourned it.

One day, one day I will celebrate their lives in joy on Amad’s Day, as I celebrate their lives every other day.  But today, today it is too hard.  It is too fresh, too new.

Today Amad’s Day is a stark day of heartbreak.  And I cry some more, the tears as fresh as the day I learned I would not see them on Arda again.  I pray to Mahal, today not understanding why he took them from me.  And then I realize it is not so simple as that.

So I do what dwarves do, I put myself to work.  Some might think we do this to avoid, to quell pain, but that is not so.  This is how we express our feelings.  I go to my workshop, I create new beads.  I pour my love for them into these new beads.  They are not the first beads I have crafted in their memory, and they will not be the last.  I braid them into my mourning braid, joining the other beads already there.  Beads that I wish were not there, but who would wish that?  My dwarrowlings, my Kili and Fili, they are with me always.

Yes, today I celebrate love and life lost.  I thank Mahal for the time I did have with them.  For love is greater than the horde of any dragon.


End file.
